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Missy and I hadn't been home more than ten minutes when she said she smelled something burning. She was standing by the tv. I walked over and could smell something but the smell was very slight. I went back to the couch, looking in the tv stand I saw flames coming up from the Deca unit. Long story short I got the flame out and ever thing unplugged.
I'm not going to get into the call into Directv right now but it was a bit frustrating.
This was the first they had heard of this happening. Well that was a relief.
All I can say is I'm glad Missy and I didn't linger over dinner or who knows what we would have come home to.

Thanks to Google search, people can appear to be smarter than they really are.

I use one of those + a power inserter as my CCK and it's sitting up in the attic, which gets hot as heck in the summertime. After reading about your experience, I think I'm going to retire it and use the HR34 as my DECA to LAN bridge going forward.

As a very long-time pet owner, I'd suggest you ask the dog (assuming that's not you in the avatar) what he/she has been up to.

Edited by TXD16, 24 August 2012 - 10:39 PM.

"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force." - Ayn Rand

WOW - glad to hear the situation didn't get escalated to something worse.

This is the first I've heard a DECA unit fry from normal installed use....so perhaps you had the "bad fortune" to have a defective one.

I learned a long time ago when many thousands or more of any electronics are manufactured...there's going to be a bad one now and then. I know someone who had a 1-year-old Yamaha AVR "burn up" inside about 18 months ago.

Most important - its good to hear things are OK there now for you and your spouse.

In hindsight (of course) there were a couple of warning signs that something was going on.
First, when I would turn on the living room tv there would be a notice that there wasn't a connection to the satellite, but that would go away within a few seconds. I never put the HR20-700 in standby. I thought that was a little weird.
The second warning started Thursday night. we were in the living room watching a movie that was recorded on the bedroom HR23-700. The movie disappeared and a notice popped up indicating that the home network connection was lost. I had to run the network setup on both dvrs to get it back. This happened several more times that evening. It continued Friday morning. I was thinking that since I have the protection plan I would call Directv and schedule a service call. We went to work, came back after, watched a bit of tv and then went out to dinner. It was just ten minutes after we got home and turned on the tv when Missy was walking by the tv when she said she smelled something burning. The rest is explained in the first post.
Now I don't know if the deca would have caught fire without the tv being on or not. But caught fire it did.
A new deca is being sent (the black one), I took the white one from the bedroom dvr and connected to the living room unit. So far no more fires. ;-)

As for as my avatar, that is a picture of my constant companion and canine soul-mate of 15 years Smoke (Cossack's Smoke-In-The-Aire). It was taken when we were moving to Florida, crossing the Georgia/Florida state lines. Sadly two years ago he crossed over the Rainbow Bridge. I still miss him very much.

"I'm sorry we nearly burned your house down, I can offer you $10 off for the next 6 months,....." Hmmm....not sure if that is a joke or not but it is better than the response from the first csr I talked to, which was...."What do you want me to do about it?". I won't repeat my response.

I'm thinking about calling Directv and seeing (under the protection plan) if they will replace the two dvrs with the HR24 with the built in deca. I don't have a lot of trust in those external ones anymore.

Thanks to Google search, people can appear to be smarter than they really are.

I'm thinking about calling DirecTV and seeing (under the protection plan) if they will replace the two DVRs with the HR24 with the built in DECA. I don't have a lot of trust in those external ones anymore.

The added info on your late companion SMOKE was nice.

Yeah...the external DECAs here actually worked well during their time...and I still retain several of them as "emergency spares" for older HD units that require them if I decide to reactive those devices. In the mean time, everything here is internal DECA, and that's the overall direction things are going with DirecTV hardware for a while now anyway since anything x24 or x25 were released.

The new black DECA units should work for you just fine. Glad you're all OK.

Good point...I guess we don't know if the "insides" are made up of the same identical components or construction attributes. I suspect somebody might know that information though...and I also suspect DirecTV would want to know about this incident.

Good point...I guess we don't know if the "insides" are made up of the same identical components or construction attributes. I suspect somebody might know that information though...and I also suspect DirecTV would want to know about this incident.

Update: I just got off the phone with Taven, great guy. He was actually appalled when he read the notes from last night and saw what little was being done because of the issue. So now two HR24s will be installed Monday, the installer is instructed to go over every connection from dish to boxes and look over the burnt deca. Also he added Showtime and Starz for 6 months. When I told Missy that there won't be any more external deca's in the house she was greatly relieved as she has a deathly fear of fire...fire where it shouldn't be. I'm relieved also.
Thanks to everyone who expressed concerned and relief that nothing really bad happened. I appreciate that.

Thanks to Google search, people can appear to be smarter than they really are.

Update: I just got off the phone with Taven, great guy. He was actually appalled when he read the notes from last night and saw what little was being done because of the issue. So now two HR24s will be installed Monday, the installer is instructed to go over every connection from dish to boxes and look over the burnt deca.

That is really great news to hear about...especially the concern and follow-up.

It's also caused me, and probably others, to check out various power supplies and rat's nests.... (no, I am not suggesting yours was a rat's nest!) to make sure everything is running within temp and is not enclosed.